


Across the Sea

by stellasilvae



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-23
Packaged: 2018-01-20 14:28:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1513868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellasilvae/pseuds/stellasilvae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shepard's take on her life and relationships.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Across the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd. Thank you for reading!

God, I'm tired. An Alliance soldier might expect to cheat death once, but it's safe to say that I have overdone it. Even making it to adulthood was a goddamn miracle. Do you have any idea how many kids on the streets of Chicago even make it to their teens? Probably not; it's not like that's something the anyone talks about. Hell, there probably aren't even accurate stats about it. Couldn't be really. We did our best to stay out of sight. All the hazards of being born far below the skywalks the rich built so they wouldn't have to walk among the beggars. The age of space travel and you would think that humans would have solved the problem of poverty.

If the bitter cold didn't get you, you were likely to get one of the illnesses that had been eradicated for the rest of the population. Pneumonia, maybe, or cancer from all the toxins and waste that ended up in the streets in the East side. If it weren't that, then maybe you got mixed up with a gang or just in the wrong place at the wrong time. People starved; some died from foul food since that was the only thing they could find. 'Nother thing the Alliance doesn't talk about in their stance against slavery is the slavery that happens on Earth's streets. Pick up a poor kid off the streets and who will know if they are forced to staff a whorehouse or sold off planet. Or maybe just be pimped off the next block over. The kids who got mixed up with the eezo waste and turned biotics had the best bet, because at lease then they were picked up and maybe made part of the military.

Me? I was mostly lucky. I don't remember my mom. Probably some red sand whore; but maybe she loved me anyway. My earliest memory is of being cold and having warm arms wrap around me. Doesn't really matter now, I guess. No dad either. Anyway, I was maybe four when I remember being picked up by a gang of kids. Spark was the leader, a teenager. She kept us in line and tried to keep us fed. We'd stick together and go to food lines and rummage at the bins of restaurants. She had learned all the hot spots and steered us around them. Kids still died, but because of her, I lived. She was a biotic. She could have gotten out of there; didn't though, because she actually cared about us. I was eight and she was sixteen when she died.

I've never been one about minding my own business. I learned quick from Spark that if you had the information you needed, that would keep you alive more than anything. Getting to know your people, their strengths, weaknesses and hang-ups, I learned from her. So I followed her one night, wondering why she was sneaking off. I hid behind a crate and watched some dirty, fat man make her suck his dick. Turned out she had been doing it so that he would allow us to stay in the alley behind his shop. It was mostly sheltered and there was a sewer drain so we could relieve ourselves. We could like a can fire when it got cold. So she sold her mouth to him every week for our shelter. I'd seen sex acts before. I'd seen people be raped before. It was different when it was Spark. She had been my mother, my mentor. All it took was a little outcry, and he was on me, pulling me out by the hair. I can still remember his foul breath on my cheek and his filthy words.

"Look at this little slut. She likes to watch. You've been holding out on me, Spark. Pretty little girl you've got here. Big, blue eyes. Maybe I just upped my price."

"Leave her alone," Spark had demanded, and tried to tackle him. Stupid girl. Brave girl. She was half his size and emaciated from years of feeding us first. He shook her off, and she was flung against the wall, head first. A thud and she collapsed without a sound. A head injury and a bad one. Blood everywhere with wide staring eyes. If she had gotten medi-gel and then gotten medical attention, she would have lived. I know that now. Still, I didn't stay to find out what he would do. I ran. I made the others follow me, and we ran. Just like that I was the new leader.

I tried to lead just like her with one exception. I learned how to fight, and I would not compromise my body. I kept most my kids from whoring; some became addicts, some still died from a myriad of ways, but more of them started to attend school. Once they started going to school, well meaning teachers and social workers started to take notice. Foster families happened for some of my kids. Maybe some were adopted. Either way, I figured their situations had to be better than before. Knowledge is power and over time, I learned who cared and who didn't, who was overworked and who would move heaven and earth to get a parent-less kid off the streets. They started to call me Shepard, because the kids were my lambs. Not all of them wanted out. As shitty as our lives were, it was the only lives they had known. I trained a successor, and the day I could pass for 18, I enlisted.

It was hard at first. I was underweight, had picked up lung cancer somewhere along the way, and there was no paperwork saying that I existed. Still, the Alliance never turns anyone away. Treatment, regular meals, and the chance to remake myself. I put the name Spark gave me for my first name on the paperwork, but vowed to never use it. I would remember her, but that wasn't who I was anymore. I would be Shepherd. Private Shepard at first, but I was determined to move up the ranks.

Within a year after basic training, my CO personally recommended me for officer training. 2nd Lieutenant Shepard. Another challenge. Although I had practically absorbed any holo or book I could find, I was still behind almost everyone else educationally. More than one fellow soldier needed to be wrestled into place. Still, no one could best me in survival training, and I was a damn good shot with a pistol or a sniper rifle. It shouldn't be too immodest of me to say that I had some natural leadership qualities, and more learned from life experiences. I moved up the ranks quickly for a street rat from Chicago. Special task forces just became another hurdle.

But it wasn't until after Akuze that I was recommended for N7. God damn Akuze and every thresher maw in existence. There is no skill in surviving a thresher maw attack and a lot of luck. When I found out that it was all a study perpetuated by Cerberus, well. You can imagine that struck the nail in the coffin that was me ever trusting them. Good men and women died on Akuze. There are families that will never see their loved one again. And I lost more friends. People I respected. People who I trusted to have my back and who trusted me to have theirs. All the psych work-ups that followed couldn't completely erase the guilt.

The N7 program was grueling. What else could it possibly be? We were supposed to be the elite; the best of the best. You either made it or you gave out. I made it. Maybe I was just too stubborn to give up. Maybe my drive to survive and to do right by my mentor, Captain David Anderson, fueled me enough to get it done. Either way, I made it and with the N7 still shiny on my uniform, Anderson requested me for his XO on his shiny new ship, the _Normandy_.

He had heard talk of me when he was still serving on the _Toyko_. In some ways, Alliance is just another high school from all those vids the kids watch. You have the theater kids - the biotics, the geeks - the engineers, the jocks are the privates and corporals, and the popular crowd would have to be the officers. Okay, so the metaphor doesn't hold up, but the Alliance gossips just like a building full of teenagers. So he heard about me, read about me, recommended me for N7, followed me there, and then brought me onto his ship. It might have been a bit creepy if he had ever treated me as anything other than a soldier and a daughter.

The _Normandy_ though, was never meant to be his. She was Joker's, and she was mine.


End file.
